Contaminated fluids have been conventionally purified by photocatalytic treatment. Photocatalytic treatment is typically employed to destroy contaminants from contaminated fluids by the method of oxidation. For example, by conventional photocatalytic treatment contaminants can be oxidized into carbon dioxide and water.
There are, however, contaminants which are not readily oxidized from a contaminated fluid by conventional photocatalytic treatment. That is, there are contaminants which are "refractive" to oxidation attempts. These refractive contaminants are therefore very difficult to oxidize using conventional photocatalytic treatment. In order to oxidize refractive contaminants from a contaminated fluid, conventional photocatalytic treatment methods require an inordinate amount of time before acceptable levels can be attained. To accelerate this laborious and time consuming method, oversized and expensive treatment equipment is often used. This significantly increases the cost of fluid purification. In addition, most heavy metals, cannot be removed from contaminated fluids through oxidation.
As a result, conventional photocatalytic treatment is therefore unable to efficiently destroy some undesirable contaminants and remove metals from a contaminated fluid. Incomplete purification of the contaminated fluid thus often results. It is thus highly desirable to provide for photocatalytic treatment techniques which overcome the aforementioned problems of conventional photocatalytic treatments in order to enable the efficient, effective and complete purification of contaminated fluids.